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Two and a half months after going to Lebanon in a bid to bring back her two young sons, a journey that ended with her being smuggled into Syria with a friend and taken into quasi-captivity by al-Qaida affiliated militants, Jolly Bimbachi is back home with her family.

The Chatham woman arrived at Ottawa’s Macdonald-Cartier International Airport early Thursday, greeted by her mother, her daughter and three sisters.

Having spent more time closer to the Syrian civil war than most, she was in surprisingly good spirits.

She wondered aloud whether she should take a bath before or after spending time with her family. She got excited about Tim Hortons, she joked that her time in Syria was a “vacation” and added that she’s not planning any others. She took pictures with her family and cracked jokes about her lack of luggage.

But as happy a return as it was for Bimbachi, it was still an incomplete one, and it’s clear that the absence of her sons in Canada is a point of acute sadness for Bimbachi.

“I know they were super-excited to come here, to come back home and be with their cousins, and their grandmother and grandfather, to be back in Canada,” said Bimbachi. “It didn’t happen. They got taken back to Lebanon. They were a little sad, but they’re OK.

“My happiest days are when we’re all together,” she said, through tears. “I want to give them the world. I just can’t right now.”

Bimbachi, along with Sean Allen Moore of Chatham, were held captive for nearly a month by Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham, an al-Qaida affiliated group in Syria, after the two tried to smuggle Bimbachi’s two sons, Omar, 9, and Abdal-Geniy, 7, out of Lebanon and back to Canada.

Her sons were in Lebanon with their father, Ali Ahmad, Bimbachi’s ex-husband, since May 2015. According to Bimbachi, Ahmad took the boys on a vacation to visit family in Lebanon when Bimbachi received a call from the boys’ uncle telling her they wouldn’t be returning to Canada.

The boys have been in Lebanon ever since.

In November, Bimbachi travelled to Lebanon, hoping to reach a custody arrangement in the Lebanese court system. When negotiations broke down, Bimbachi connected with smugglers who, she hoped, would escort them through Syria to Turkey, where she would be able to get to the Canadian embassy and ultimately home to Ontario.

Those plans went awry, she says, when people connected to the boys’ father began posting on social media that Bimbachi was planning to convert the children to Christianity and offering a cash reward for their return.

“It became dangerous for us to move,” said Bimbachi in a video posted by SITE Intelligence Group. “I don’t know how the Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham got involved, but I think it’s a good thing they did. They came and they got us and we spent a few nice nights with my boys before they took them back to Lebanon.”

The specifics of what happened to Bimbachi and Moore during the month of January remain somewhat unclear to her. She’s not certain where the smuggling ended and the captivity began or by whom she was being held. As the group travelled through Syria, her and her sons were “bounced around” from safe house to safe house, and eventually handed off to the Syrian Salvation Government.

“Originally, we were supposed to drive from Lebanon to the Turkish border,” said Moore, in the same video. “It went south in Lebanon. I just didn’t know it yet. As soon as the walking started, I knew something wasn’t right. So we just kept on moving forward until we got here.”

She and Moore were separated for part of the time, Bimbachi said, and while she was put up in safe houses, Moore was held “in a jail.”

“I won’t say that I wasn’t scared,” she said, but added she was “well taken care of.”

Moore returned to Chatham Wednesday, said Bimbachi.

Whether what Bimbachi and Moore endured could be classified as a hostage-taking situation is largely a matter of interpretation. Canadian officials said they were in constant contact with the pair, who never expressed serious concern for their safety. But even relatively safe captivity is still captivity, and temporarily losing someone — a daughter, a sister, a mother— exacts an emotional toll.

“Today was the first day I actually smiled,” said Hoda Bimbachi, Jolly’s mother, waiting in the mostly empty baggage claim area of the Ottawa airport.

“I’m so relieved now. I’ve been happy all day. I felt like the whole world wasn’t enough, like it doesn’t fit me.”